


Leap of Faith

by blueelvewithwings



Category: Arrow (TV 2012), The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Blindness, Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Trust Issues, blind!Barry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-03
Updated: 2018-11-03
Packaged: 2019-08-17 03:37:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,422
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16508639
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blueelvewithwings/pseuds/blueelvewithwings
Summary: The man that killed his mother also took Barry's eyesight. That doesn't bother him most of the time, there's only one thing he's concerned about: How will he ever find his soulmate if he can't read the mark on his own arm?





	Leap of Faith

Barry had always been fine with not being able to see. Of course it had its downsides, like people not taking him seriously, tripping him up, him getting lost a lot and so on, but it really hadn‘t bothered him too much. Joe had always been sure to not move furniture around without telling him or leave things on the floor so he had been able to get around the house without help. He and Iris quickly learned to accomodate Barry‘s needs, and he was fine. He had a stick for walking outside, and people in the neighborhood and at work knew him and often helped him out if he was indeed in need of help.

No, Barry had never really felt bad over being blind. He would love to see what his loved ones looked like, sure, but he had an image of them in his head that mirrored the love and warmth he felt for them and to him, that was enough. He sometimes sat on the couch with Iris, across from her, and felt along her face, mapping out her nose, eyes, lips, feeling her hair. He knew he could distinguish her from anyone else by touch, and that was enough for him.

There was one thing that bothered him though, and that was the one thing that no one could help him with.

There was the tiny little problem of his soulmark.

Everyone was born with a soulmark, or so they said, but it took a while for them to bloom on people‘s skin, mostly a spot on their underarms. Mostly it was during their teenage years that ink started to appear on their arms, slowly shaping itself into a name. The first name of their soulmate. Barry‘s mark had appeared a few years after the man in the lightning took his mother and injured his eyes, a few years after he became blind.

Barry had felt when his own mark appeared, and had spent many hours stroking it, trying to feel the ink in his skin, manipulating it into being raised enough for him to feel its outlines.

Sadly, it never worked. So Barry had a name on his skin, the name of his soulmate, the one he was destined to love, and he had no idea who it could be.

He had asked, of course. Asked his friends and family and people he had dated before, but he had gotten so many different replies or versions of „I can‘t really tell you“ that he had all but given up. He would have trusted Iris to tell him the truth, but she had never told him what it was on his arm. By her choked up reaction when she first saw the name on his arm Barry figured it must not be her, and that was verified when a few years ago she had found Eddie and had revealed to Barry that it was her now-husband‘s name that was tattooed into her skin.

So now Barry knew that it was not Iris, but she wouldn‘t tell him who it was either. All she ever said was that it was no one Barry knew. Or at least no one Iris knew.

After years of frustrations, and wanting to beg Joe and Iris to tell him the truth while still knowing that he wouldn‘t trust what they said because he wouldn‘t be able to verify it, he just gave up. He took to only ever wearing long sleeves, never showing his mark to anyone, and he never really mentioned it either.

What reason was there, anyway, if he wouldn‘t even be able to tell who his soulmate would be?

He started dating, and some of his dates pretended that it was his name on their arms, or maybe it was, but each of them gave Barry the distinct feeling that they weren‘t meant for him. Not with how uneasy they were with his blindness, or his social awkwardness, not with trying to talk him out of being a CSI because it was too dangerous for someone „like Barry“, apparently. Whatever that was supposed to mean.

So with every person that he dated, he felt more and more alone in the end, until he just stopped doing it altogether.

And then, just a few months after his last date, he was hit with a lightning strike that turned him into the fastest man alive, so suddenly he had to think about other things than the weird script on his forearm anyway.

Barry trained on the treadmill a lot, but he never dared to go out. What if he ran into a car by accident, or against a building, or missed the person he was running after or running for? He would not be able to take his stick with him when he went out running, so they had to come up with something else.

And of course, Cisco did come up with something else. He presented Barry with a camera to fasten onto his suit, so he could see where Barry was running form Barry‘s perspective and guide him through the city.

Of course, the first few test runs still ended with Barry in the water, or crashed in a pile of boxes, or in the completely wrong spot. But slowly, they worked out the kinks and it became smoother and smoother until Barry knew he could trust Cisco to guide him to where he needed to go without any accidents.

He could not run as fast as he migt have if he could see for himself, but he needed to go slow enough so Cisco could tell him where to go before it was too late. And soon it was all over the papers – as Dr. Wells told him – stories about the Flash, the new hero of Central City.

And thus, Barry‘s new life began.

It wasn‘t until he met Felicity again that he was also painfully reminded of his soulmark. Felicity was perfect for him, in just about every way, and he was perfect for her. But still, there was just no romantic spark between them. And when he had asked her, at some point, if it was her name on his arm, she had told him no. And something in her voice had made him trust her. So now he knew that it wasn‘t Iris, and it wasn‘t Felicity either. That only left the rest of the world as possible candidates then.

Now that he was around Felicity again he wondered what it would have been like to have her as his soulmate, to learn how to be around her and live with her. He couldn‘t really imagine it though, but he guessed it would have been pretty nerdy.

With seeing Felicity again came seeing Oliver again, and his voice gave Barry goosebumps just like the last time. He still couldn‘t believe that the famous Oliver Queen was the Arrow, but then again nothing seemed impossible in this world anymore.

Just like before, Oliver was abrasive and short with Barry, but somehow that didn‘t put him off. Instead, he felt challenged to be better, to show Oliver that he was worthy, and it elated him. He was so sick of always being handled with more care than anyone else because of his blindness. He wasn‘t made of glass, and he wasn‘t an invalid either. Disabled, yes, but not invalid. He hated it when people treated him differently, but Oliver didn‘t, and Barry adored him for it.

He found himself wanting to be friends with him, just like he was with Felicity, and sometimes when he wasn‘t paying attention a tiny voice in the back of his mind would start asking what name it was that Oliver had written on his skin.

Felicity had told him that no one had ever seen it, and that Oliver showed it to no one after he had had a bad experience with it. What that experience was, no one knew either.

Training with Oliver was amazing, even if Barry did end up getting shot in the back. In a way, it made him even happier, because it really meant that Oliver was not holding back with him. He was grumpy and short and abrasive, but still Barry noticed that he set his feet down a little heavier when he was approaching Barry than when he was already close and they were talking, and that he never touched Barry without announcing his presence first. He didn‘t treat Barry any differently, but he still respected the limits that the speedster had.

It was amazing. Barry had never felt so alive before.

But of course, being Barry, he didn‘t quite manage to express that, especially not after the little incident with Rainbow Raider. They had all thought that if Barry could not look at him – for obvious reasons – Rainbow Raider could not whammy him.

Well. Now they know that they were wrong.

And Oliver left again with the rest of his team, and Barry was alone once more. He knew that his friends weren‘t walking on eggshells around him, but still they weren‘t treating him the same as anyone else. Like Oliver had.

After he had left again, Barry found himself wondering more and more who might be lucky enough to deserve the Starling City vigilante, and somehow it was much easier imaginging himself with Oliver than it had been to imagine himself with Felicity. He wondered if things had been like this for Iris and Eddie, or Caitlin and Ronnie. He caught himself playing with his sleeve right over his soulmark again more and more, and Dr. Wells even called him out on it a few times. Sometimes Barry wondered if Dr. Wells had been a nicer man when he had still had his wife. And if his wife had been his soulmate.

He kept in touch with Oliver and his team, and sometimes even ran to Star City when phone calls just weren‘t enough. Sometimes he sat on a roof with Oliver, side by side, and they would talk about everything and nothing. Sometimes he asked Oliver to describe something to him, and usually Oliver would ask him about the way he experienced things right afterwards.

It was fun, and challenging, to try and explain the way he saw things to Oliver, sometimes a mixture of recent experiences and memories of what things looked like when he was a child, sometimes an impression that he had no image to connect to at all. That sometimes he wondered how his friends looked, how he himself looked, what people meant when they said he had such pretty green eyes. He could barely remember what his own eyes looked like at this point. And he wondered how Oliver‘s eyes looked, but he never told him that.

In return, Oliver told him about the things that Barry could not see, even if he didn‘t seem the type to do such things. One night he spent the entire evening telling Barry about the stars in the sky as they lay on their backs on a rooftop that was still warm from the sun even though it had disappeared hours ago. Barry listened intently and tried to imagine his darkness being sprinkled with little dots of light, and how it must feel to look up to them and know that they were lightyears upon lightyears away. He remembered stargazing with his father when he was a child, but by now it was more of a memory of elation and happiness than actual images of what the starry sky had looked like.

Sometimes Oliver would tell him about small things, too, little flowers with interesting colours or some interesting handwritten note that he had found. They also talked about their adventures from time to time, ways they had come up with to take the bad guys down, but mostly it was just downtime for both of them.

One night, Barry found himself leaning against Oliver‘s shoulder, and Oliver‘s arm came up around Barry, pulling him in to hold him close. Barry‘s hand came to rest on Oliver‘s thigh, and suddenly he found himself wondering again, about the question that was haunting him his whole life.

„What‘s the name on your arm?“ he asked the archer, and to his surprise Oliver just stiffened in response.

„You… wouldn‘t believe me anyway“ he told him after a while, and Barry nodded. Of course Oliver wouldn‘t want to share something as private as that with him.

„Of course“ he told him with a forced smile, „You know I have trouble believing that. Did I ever tell you that I had three dates in two weeks and all three told me it was their name on my arm? Yeah no, That‘s not how you get someone‘s trust.“ He knew he was babbling, and he needed to get out of here, fast.

After all, his hopes that it might have been his name on Oliver‘s arm were just about shattered now. Because if it was, Oliver would surely have told him, wouldn‘t he?

So he made up some excuse – likely something involving S.T.A.R. labs – and rushed back to Central City. This route he could do without Cisco by now, he knew a remote street that hardly anyone ever drove on. And if they did – well, Barry did have better ears than most.

But somehow, after that, he made up his mind.

He wanted to know. And he could trust his friends, right? So maybe if they would tell him, and they would all tell him the same name… then he would know, wouldn‘t he?

So he approached Iris again, his arm bared to her, asking her to just tell her the name. „I‘ll believe you this time“ he told her, almost begging her. „I know that I can trust you.“

But still, when he heard the name _Oliver_ whispered from her, he couldn‘t help but to feel a tendril of doubt. After all, Iris would want him to be happy. So of course she would tell him the name of his current crush – or the person he currently had feelings for.

So of course, he went to Caitlin next, and when he heard _Oliver_ from her as well he almost started to believe it. Caitlin would never lie to him, after all. But what if she also just wanted to make him happy?

He asked Dr. Wells next, but he just got a little chuckle and „You wouldn‘t trust me to tell you the truth anyway, Mister Allen“, which had been true up until now, but didn‘t help him now either.

Joe refused to tell him with the same reasoning, which Barry could understand, but it was also very frustrating because now he needed to know from as many people as he could to be sure that his name was _Oliver_ indeed. Oliver Queen, maybe. It was truly funny to see how Barry Allen, puppy turned human and most trusting person in Central City, did not trust even his closest friends to tell him the truth when it came to his soulmark.

In the end, it was Cisco who came up with something. He approached Barry with a sort of scanner that could take a picture of something handwritten, transform it into a computer-readable font and then convert it into Braille from there. So Barry found himself in Cisco‘s lab, impatiently waiting for the little dots to appear on the field designed for him to read off of.

And then they started appearing with a little beep.

O.L.I.V.E.R.

_Oh._

The next time Barry met Oliver, they met during the day, and Barry enjoyed the warmth on his face from the sun that was shining down on them generously today. It was warm, too. Too warm for a sweater. So Barry decided to ditch his.

„I‘ve always wondered, you know. I don‘t know what my soulmark says. Could you tell me?“ He turned his arm around, presenting the inside that he knew bore his mark to Oliver.

„I think I‘m ready to know.“

There was no sound beside him apart from a deep breathing that he knew indicated Oliver not being calm, but rather highly agitated. Oliver didn‘t speak, but Barry detected the change in his breathing that indicated he might have started to cry easily. It was a soundless crying, but Barry still knew it was happening.

Instead of an answer, he finally got a deep breath from the archer.

„Your real name… your full name, it‘s… it‘s Bartholomew, isn‘t it?“

And somehow, that said everything that he needed to know.

He reached out to grab Oliver‘s arm and drag him into his lap, easily rolling up the sleeves of the loose hoodie Oliver wore that day. He slid his fingers over arm and soon detected the slighly different texture of skin where the ink sat below it. Different enough to notice, not different enough to trace.

There was a hand on his own, and Oliver gently guided his fingers down below the tattoo, to a place where there were… tiny bumps? It only took Barry fractions of a moment to figure out that below Oliver‘s soulmate‘s name, there was _Braille Script_ that was part of this soulmark. His fingers trembled a bit, and he took a deep breath to calm himself before he let them glide over the little dots.

B.A.R.T.H.O.L.O.M.E.W.

It was clear as day, spelled out in clearly separated dots of Braille, and Barry suddenly had to stifle a sob.

„Oliver“ he asked, his voice sounding urgent and needy even to his own eyes.

„Oliver, what name does my soulmate have?“

There was another beat of silence, but then there were two hands on his face and a forehead pressed against his own. He had heard about this, about lover‘s looking into each other‘s eyes like this, and it pained him that he couldn‘t give Oliver this moment the way it was supposed to be.

„Oliver“ Oliver rasped, sounding on the verge of tears.

„Your soulmate‘s name is Oliver, Bartholomew.“

And just like that, the dam seemed to break.

Barry threw his arms around Oliver‘s shoulders, burying his face in his neck as he cried softly. Twenty-eight years of not even knowing his soulmate‘s name, twenty-eight years of thinking he would never even be able to search, let alone find his soulmate, and now he had him. He had found him, and it felt right and it was everything he had wanted and all the things he hadn‘t expected all at once. Before Oliver, it hadn‘t even occured to him that his soulmate might not be a woman, but now he found that he really couldn‘t care less. Oliver was Oliver, and he was perfect like that.

He found himself pushed back a little, and a breathy little „may I?“ just in front of his face indicated what was about to happen. Sweet Oliver, always so attentive.

He nodded, leaning forward in what he hoped was the right direction, and he was rewarded with the soft bump of lips against his, warm and dry and wonderfully comforting. Barry had always loved kissing, had always reveled in feeling so close to someone else in a way that didn‘t require sight at all, but somehow that all felt more intense and more _right_ with Oliver. Maybe this was what it meant to find a soulmate, then. To just get a feeling of belonging and rightness, and the indestructible feeling that this was _right_ and would last.

Later they were sitting in Barry‘s apartment on the couch, and Barry had Oliver‘s arm in his lap again, tracing over the Braille script over and over again as if he couldn‘t believe it. And maybe some part of him really couldn‘t, but the feeling of Oliver‘s free hand carding through his hair and his chuckling at parts of the show that was running on TV made it feel so real. Barry wanted to take Oliver, lead him into his bedroom and go for it, but he also just wanted to sit here and revel in being together, in having Oliver‘s presence close to him, in knowing that he was who was meant to be with Barry.

But then, he had to snort suddenly, and he could feel more than hear Oliver turning towards him in confusion.

„Bartholomew. I can‘t believe you have _Bartholomew_ on your arm instead of _Barry_.“


End file.
